


No Mercy Rule

by PoppyAlexander



Series: Bleed So Pretty: A Collection of Fight!lock Stories [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, And Getting Darker, Anorexia, Biting, Blood, Dark John, Dark Sherlock, Eating Disorders, Fight Club - Freeform, Fight!lock, Fighting Kink, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, John Still Doesn't Think Sherlock's Clever, Just Generally Quite Dark, M/M, Oral Sex, Punching, Really Rather A Lot Of Biting, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Scratching, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-28
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-26 22:45:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1705325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's brain is racing, his gut is burning, his soul is shattered, he is exhausted, and he is starving. He needs more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Mercy Rule

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eljesselle (justlikesomuch)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justlikesomuch/gifts), [Marcy09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marcy09/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Никаких поблажек](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3706585) by [ph_craftlove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ph_craftlove/pseuds/ph_craftlove)
  * Inspired by [Five Times Sherlock And John Met Cute (And One That Was Decidedly Un-cute)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1288150) by [PoppyAlexander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander). 



> There are obtuse but meaningful references in this story to anorexia/eating disorders (nothing graphic or detailed), self-harm/cutting (very implicit but could still be triggering), and drug/alcohol addiction/recovery. Please be careful if any of these things could put you in danger; you are so much more important than my smut. I'm not kidding.
> 
>  
> 
> Turning up the darkness, y'all. Abandon hope, all ye, etc, etc.

Three weeks. Eight new cases. Three solved cases. Twenty-one biscuits. Two-thousand, one hundred press-ups. Bit of sleep. No John Watson.

John arrives late Sunday evening, stayed the weekend in Berwick. But he hates Berwick. Sherlock is on his bed, dressed in pyjama bottoms, feet bare, reading about poisons. John’s footsteps up the stairs, then in the lounge—he pauses but doesn’t call out a hello—then up the stairs to his room. Sherlock’s nostrils twitch. Clearly, John has not spent the weekend in Berwick, after all. He has been in London, but not at Baker Street.

The knot of fire in Sherlock’s gut tightens. Blazes.

Book abandoned, Sherlock’s long feet take him to the landing. He listens. John is plugging in his laptop, his phone; he has taken off his shoes. He smells of. . . Sherlock’s eyes close. _What is it what is it what is it?_

His usual laundry detergent, different shampoo—common, cheap, every third person one meets smells of it—his usual after shave, and something else.

“Come up, if you’re coming,” John says suddenly, not loudly.

Sherlock takes four quick, light strides and he is standing in the kitchen. Will he make tea? He looks down his front; his nipples are hard. He flexes his toes and the big toe of his left foot lets out a loud crack. His fingers are fluttering, flickering, but in slow-motion; his knuckles are clean, uncut, unscratched. Sherlock picks apart the knot in the drawstring of his pyjama bottoms, re-ties a loose bow with long loops, easy to pull. He grins, without knowing it. He is so very clever.

John in his sock-feet coming down the stairs toward the kitchen. Sherlock quickly reaches for a drawer and begins to rummage.

“That curry shop’s open late, isn’t it?” John asks, nonchalant. “Fucking starving.” He stands behind Sherlock, just a little space between their bodies, looks over Sherlock’s shoulder. “Whatever you’re looking for, it’s probably not in there. Careful you don’t stab yourself.” He does not sound as if he would care if Sherlock stabbed himself. John moves on, picks up Sherlock’s phone from the table. “You have the number in here? They deliver, right?”

The fiery knot in Sherlock’s stomach turns to ash dipped in acid, settles down like falling feathers into the bowl of his pelvis.

“Unlikely. I try not to eat. . .” he says, and he knows John is waiting for him to finish the thought: not to eat _—fast food, —takeaways, —so late at night, –too much salt._ But Sherlock does not say any of these things.

John tips his head and something in his eyes changes: he is a doctor and Sherlock, a patient to be diagnosed.

“You try not to. . .“ he ventures, “. . . _eat?_ ”

_Make this go away. This must go away._

Sherlock, his hand still resting limply inside the drawer full of madness, stabs himself.

“Ow! Damn it!” Sherlock shouts and yanks his hand back, instinctually sucks his fingertip. “Found it,” he jokes mildly. He shuts the drawer without taking anything out. John’s eyes go back the way they were. He looks down, scrolls the screen of Sherlock’s phone with his thumb.

“Sutures?” he asks casually. Sherlock takes his phone back, sets it aside, shakes his head no. John’s gaze rakes Sherlock’s pale, naked chest (one hundred, fifteen pull-ups) and abdomen (three thousand, one hundred, fifty sit-ups), and Sherlock turns more toward him, leans lightly against the countertop. John’s eyes stop at the fly of Sherlock’s pyjama bottoms (one button, one drawstring, two easy-to-pull loops). Sherlock’s cock stirs a bit, John doesn’t see it, but it won’t be long before he does.

Three weeks. No fights. Seven partners. Thirty-three orgasms.

John’s eyes dart down and to the side, indicating the floor. “She at home?”

Sherlock affects a listening posture, subtle, just shoulders and a slight turn of the head. His finger is still bleeding. He licks away the bead of blood with the tip of his tongue.

“She has a boyfriend. She sleeps at his, Sunday and Monday nights.”

John takes a step forward, traps Sherlock’s hand in his own. “Your parlour trick’s good for something, then,” he says dismissively. “I’m sure she didn’t tell you that. You figured it out.”

“Deduced it,” Sherlock can’t help but say. He wants to tear John’s clothes, pull his hair, bite his fingers until he feels the bones grinding between his teeth. His eyes are so wide he can feel that it takes him longer than normal to blink.

“Right,” John says, with a condescending smirk. He holds Sherlock’s hand closer to his face, turns it, squints at the bead of blood shivering on the side of Sherlock’s second fingertip. John pinches Sherlock’s finger, squeezes. The bead wobbles, breaks, streams down over both their fingertips. “Very pretty,” John says, and then his tongue is snaking over the tangle of their fingers, and the wound is clean though actually it’s dirty because tongues are never clean. There are living things on tongues, tens of thousands of them. Magnified, they resemble coloured candy sprinkles like those used on ice cream sundaes.

The knot in Sherlock’s stomach is on fire again, and now growing, and now writhing.

He inhales a hard, stuttering breath, and then he knows. What John smells of. The cheap shampoo was not of his choosing. His own aftershave is present, yes, but someone else’s, as well. John spent the weekend in London, with a man. He rubbed his face against the other man’s face—kissing, rutting, nuzzling—and so their scents mingled, clinging to John’s skin and to the end-of-day stubble on his cheeks and chin and upper lip. The other man’s face would bear the same two scents, in the opposite ratio.

John draws back, drops Sherlock’s hand. “I can see you think you just figured something out.” John licks his lips—usually a nervous tic, but here: aggression. _I will eat you, little rabbit._ “About me.”

“Deduced something about you, yes,” Sherlock says, feet back under him. He remembers who he is. _Not_ a parlour trick. He is internationally known.

John takes a step backward, turns up his palms, wears a half-sneering smile. A challenge.

“The man you were with this weekend has a shaved head and a lot of money and doesn’t care about you.”

John’s shoulders jump as he harrumphs a skeptical laugh.

“Your face smells of his aftershave. Tom Ford, Private Blend, Italian.  If he had hair to buy shampoo for, it would be posh stuff sold at a salon; but he only stocks shampoo on your behalf, and he skimps. He spoils himself at Harvey Nichols and buys things for you at Boots.”

“Well, but he sucks like a Hoover,” John says levelly. “Swallows, too. With gusto.”

“You kissed him. This evening, before you came here.” Sherlock’s gut is completely hollow. His voice drips acid. “You kissed him—what—good-night?” The expression on Sherlock’s face is carefully arranged. Mocking, down-the-nose, implying John is childish, even girlish: snogging his sweetheart on the doorstep.

“Don’t worry your pretty head about it, gorgeous.” John grabs again for Sherlock’s hand, yanks hard as he pulls it to his face, bites down on the outside of Sherlock’s palm. Sherlock winces, his shoulder drops, leaning into it. “You’re jealous that I don’t kiss you good-night?” In one fluid motion, John has pinned Sherlock’s arm, standing close, chest-to-chest as he reaches around Sherlock’s back to press his wrist against his shoulder blade.

The fiery knot in Sherlock’s gut is made of icy knots and it is pressing hard below his navel.

Sherlock tilts his chin down, parts his lips, mostly on purpose. John catches Sherlock’s flushed lower lip between his teeth and rocks it back and forth, bearing down with a threat of pain, of broken skin. Sherlock moans, not at all on purpose. His free hand slides up and under the hem of John’s shirt, finds his nipple, pinches, pulls, does not release. John’s fingers tangle in Sherlock’s hair, tug hard.

Sherlock’s lip is still trapped between John’s teeth, and John moves, forcing Sherlock to follow. John pulls him by his mouth, maneuvering their two bodies through the narrow space between the countertops and table, bumping a chair so that it scrapes across the floor, then wobbles, then falls.

There are tears assembling themselves in the corners of Sherlock’s eyes. He wraps his arm around John’s back, beneath his shirt, keeping close because he has to. When they have rounded the corner of the table, John frees Sherlock’s lip but instead of pulling away, Sherlock lurches forward, presses his aching mouth against John’s. He stretches his tongue to lick John’s tongue, and John lets him, and does the same.

Sherlock’s well-manicured nails etch delicate trails all along John’s back as he rakes his hands hard across John’s shoulders and low back. Sherlock’s kisses are threatening, staking claim, asserting ownership. He will delete that other man. John groans, pulls away, swings a heavy backhand across Sherlock’s face, which makes Sherlock gasp and catch himself on the edge of the table. He roars back at John, full force, his shoulder into John’s sternum, and knocks him against the armchair in the lounge. It scrapes loudly against the floor as they ricochet off it, a tangle of limbs thrusting and blocking, the soundtrack a low rumble of growls and grunts punctuated by the percussive slap of skin against skin.

They grapple, shuffling across the floor. Sherlock knows the exact location of every bit of detritus in the flat and choreographs his movements to avoid obstacles. But John trips, kicking over a pile of newspapers, unopened letters, computer-generated reports of Sherlock’s random drugs tests. He stumbles forward, reaches for the table’s edge but his hand slides inelegantly across some small pool of god-knows-what, and he lands chest-down on the tabletop. Sherlock crashes down on John’s back, chops the blade of his hand down at the junction of John’s neck and shoulder, then sinks his teeth into the back of John’s neck, feeling the thick rope of muscle shift in his bite. John shouts, struggles. Sherlock releases his bite, licks his lips. Sherlock’s mouth is watering, his skin is tingling everywhere—tiny pinpricks of heat and cold—but if asked he could still easily recite Pi to the three-hundredth decimal, or conjugate Spanish verbs in conditional tenses, and that will never do. He needs _more_.

“Off!” John shouts, but Sherlock’s full weight is leaning into his forearms across John’s upper back. John suddenly sweeps one muscular arm across the table. Papers and beakers and pointy metal pick-like things and toast crusts and a toy boat all go flying. Glass shatters spectacularly. “Hope that wasn’t anything important,” John huffs. Sherlock leans hard on one elbow, his other hand fumbling for John’s belt buckle.

 John makes a cunning move with one foot, tangles up Sherlock’s legs and forces him to shift his balance in order not to suffer a broken ankle. Instantly, John is on his feet, and he jabs his fists at Sherlock’s bare chest, a quick, staccato duo of hollow-sounding thumps. Sherlock stumbles back, falls onto hands and knees.

The knot in his gut is made of poisonous snakes wrapped in barbed wire and it is growing by the second. There is a high-pitched whine in his ears. He sees his chest and belly heaving with breath but he cannot hear or feel his breathing. There is a thunderhead in the distance, and when it arrives it will cover the vast sky of his racing mind and muffle it.

John stomps his heel down on the fingers of Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock lets go a choking moan, goes frantically at John’s ankle with the long, knobby fingers of his other hand, grasping, pulling, scratching.

He _roars_. “Get off my hand!”

John is unbuckling his belt, unfastening his jeans. He leans to grab a handful of Sherlock’s hair, tries to raise his head, but Sherlock goes on struggling to free himself. John grinds his heel in a semi-circle against Sherlock’s bony fingers and Sherlock nearly screams.

“Come on, gorgeous, behave yourself,” John soothes sarcastically, yanks hard at Sherlock’s head. He is left with a knotted mass of hairs in his fist as Sherlock dives toward John’s ankle and bites hard. John yelps, jumps back. He is about to swing his foot toward Sherlock’s face when something shapely and battered and formerly-expensive in his peripheral gaze catches his eye and he stops himself.

Sherlock cradles his hand, bends and stretches his fingers, rolls and waves them, sitting back on his heels.

John clears his throat. “Look,” he starts, clears his throat again. “I didn’t know—“

“Forget it,” Sherlock snarls. “There’s no Mercy Rule. Forget it.” Sherlock grips both his fists tightly, rests them on his thighs. His back is curved so that he is as small as he gets.

John clears his throat again. He is panting, catching his breath. Sherlock notices John’s socks are a mismatched pair: the same colour and style but one is much older than the other. John buys them in bulk, always the same, simpler that way. This deduction is just unhelpful, boring trivia—at very best merely underscores things Sherlock has already discerned about John. He immediately schedules it for deletion.

Sherlock begins to uncoil himself, holds one hand up as if in surrender as he rises to stand. John was not moving toward him, anyway.

“Don’t get soft on me, now, Dr Watson,” Sherlock intones, squaring up his fists in front of his chest. “Where were we?” John’s face flickers momentarily, something  even more like gratitude than like relief.

“Believe you were under the mistaken impression you were going to bugger me up against your bloody disgusting kitchen table.”

Sherlock tilts his head, half-smiles.

“I don’t think I was mistaken.”

John’s voice is lower, dangerous. “Guess we’ll see.” He juts out his chin a bit. “Here, have a free one,” he offers in the same low voice. He is expecting Sherlock to punch him. Sherlock takes one long stride toward him and bites down on John’s chin, hard, quick, then mashes his open mouth against John’s, sucks John’s lips, invades John’s mouth with his tongue, scrapes the tender inside of John’s lower lip with the edges of his teeth. Sherlock’s hands grasp hard at the sides of John’s head, steadying him because it is Sherlock’s intention to devour John, swallow him, feed him to the knot in his gut made of starving, long-clawed animals.

John’s hands clamp around Sherlock’s upper arms and he pushes, shoves, steering Sherlock back and sideways. Sherlock scrapes his lip against the stubble next to John’s mouth, breathes hard and sharp against John’s face. In a moment, Sherlock is thrust backward into the armchair, and John kneels between his knees, and reaches for the loops of his drawstring, and pulls.

Sherlock’s head lolls languidly on his neck and he husks out, “Fight’s not over. No one’s bleeding.” John’s face is in Sherlock’s lap, his lips and nose and chin shifting the fabric of Sherlock’s pyjamas, now and then brushing against his erection through the fabric. Sherlock stills him with one hand on his head, reaches to the nearby table under the stack of maps where he keeps it, and withdraws a shiny razorblade. He taps the flat of the blade against his bottom lip, looks through narrowed eyes at John.

John meets his gaze and there is something in his eyes Sherlock can’t decode, but it is not pity, and it is not concern, and it is not even surprise. Nonetheless, John taps out against Sherlock’s thigh, two fingers, _taptaptap_ , and it’s done. Sherlock slides the blade back home, gives John a silent suggestion with his long palm against the back of John’s neck.

John frees Sherlock’s erection from his pyjama bottoms, messily licks the palm of his hand, slides his curled fist down Sherlock’s length, tugging back his foreskin. John licks at the pearl of pre-cum that blooms from the little slit, then swirls his tongue around the crown, then slides his mouth down onto Sherlock’s shaft, his hand making up the difference, stroking in time.

The knot in Sherlock’s gut surges forward and down, and he gasps and his eyes squint shut. John is efficient, nearly all-business, humming and moaning around the persistent, aching thrum of Sherlock’s cock. A most-welcome dark cloud rolls across Sherlock’s mind and he exhales until his lungs are empty, burning for another breath.

John’s free hand finds Sherlock’s hand and guides it to his neck, his throat. John’s fingers against Sherlock’s fingers give instruction Sherlock obediently, aggressively follows. He pinches the skin of John’s neck—and twists—and John groans extravagantly, sputters out of rhythm for a moment before he is back at it, sucking, his tongue rolling, and Sherlock’s hips rock up to meet his mouth. John reaches down to free his own cock from his already-open jeans, begins to pull. Sherlock digs his fingertips into the side of John’s neck, scraping, scratching, his fingernails will leave marks there. John whines and gasps, his breath huffing out his nostrils, stirring the tips of Sherlock’s pubic hair. Sherlock tugs hard on John’s ear, then, pinching and twisting it (Sherlock knows just how very painful and arousing this is, from copious personal experience of just such a punishment) and John’s mouth falls fully away from Sherlock as he comes, panting, growling, his dark blue eyes rolling back before they close.

“Mm.” John wipes his hand on the lower leg of Sherlock’s pyjamas. “Now you,” he mutters—it sounds like a threat—and he is back at Sherlock: wide, wet mouth, and now with both hands, one on Sherlock’s cock and one handling his balls. Sherlock grips the arms of the chair, his brain is shut down to only basic functions: fight or flight, physical sensation, a quick uncoiling deep and low in his gut, and his pelvis thrusts up and forward, and his voice is unfamiliar to him as it knifes up, out of his throat, and away—a sword swallowed in reverse.

John lifts himself to stand, tucks himself back into his trousers and zips up, fastens his belt.

“I’ll write you a prescription for something—for the hand,” John offers. It is so unlike an apology.

Sherlock stares hard across the room at nothing. He rearranges his clothes. “No,” he says.

John moves toward the kitchen, minding the shattered glass absolutely everywhere on the floor, and opens a cupboard in vain hope of finding something edible, because didn’t this start when he was talking about being hungry? “I could do the good stuff, you’re sure you don’t want it?”

“I can’t.”

“And why’s that?” John asks casually. He finds the box with three biscuits left in, tips them into his hand. He expects Sherlock to say he is allergic, or that he can’t take advantage of their personal. . .association. . .to use John’s services as a doctor. He doesn’t say those things.

Sherlock does not look at him. His voice is a haughty challenge: “What was your drink, then?” Parlour trick, indeed. “I have you down for a gin-and-tonic man.”

John clears his throat, hums grimly. “Piss off,” he says. “I told you once already I don’t think you’re clever.” He tosses the biscuit box on the countertop, steps carefully around the broken glass, ascends the stairs.

 

-END-

**Author's Note:**

> The "Mercy Rule" in sports allows for a match to end early based on one side getting completely creamed by the other, with no hope of winning.
> 
> fuckyeahfightlock.tumblr.com for fight-y goodness and related bloodsport.  
> PoppyAlexander-fic.tumblr.com for other fic updates and things that catch my fancy.


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